Vinyl & Verses

  In the recent weeks of AP Lang, we spent a great deal of time discussing a  rather controversial  yet intriguing topic: gender roles. One piece that especially sparked my interest was I Want a Wife by Judy B rady.  In this piece, Judy discusses the overwhelming burden that a wife must carry  through the  satirical  perspective of a husband’s demands:  a wife that can cook, clean, take care of the kids, give up education, stay loyal, etc.  By adopting the perspective of a demanding husband, she highlights how selfish and one-sided traditional marriage roles are. She  isn't   looking  for a wife; she is exposing how  much  wives are exploited.   After reading this piece,  I was left in sheer awe with the burden of  a wife . It left me in a state of  true appreciation  for women like my mother who do so much around the house . However, I hold  just   as much  appreciation f...

"I first began to know the  unwieldy  inheritance that I'd come into--the ability to alter public space in ugly ways." - Brent Staples   The quote above is a statement made by Brent Staples in his piece "Just Walk on By" in which he encounters the deep realization that his race has an overwhelming effect on public space--a realization that shouldn't be true, but is an unfortunate reality of the society we live in. In this piece he explores the idea of him being a victim in a world where men like him are painted as a threat, creating a dynamic irony that intrigued me to write about him in my blog.   One thing  that I found especially  intriguing  was the fact that Staples felt the need to sing "sunny selections from Vivaldi's four seasons" in which he labeled this action as a precaution to seem less threatening. Music usually serves as an escape, but it was a shield for Brent Staples.  Perhaps in  the realm of literature, nothing rivals the ha...